


Stardust

by ironiccowboykink



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (mentioned) - Freeform, Ableism, Ableist Language, Child Abuse, Disabled!Tony, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, This was written by an able bodied person, War, internalized ableism, my disability is all in my head babey, which is why I couldnt fucking finish lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-29 21:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19839025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironiccowboykink/pseuds/ironiccowboykink
Summary: He’s twelve years old now. His shoulders press into his stupid silk bedsheets like shrapnel.“An explosion.” Tony wiggles his fingers. His hands will get him out of this. Dig his limp, useless body out of the holes Father has made. Maybe an explosion isn't right. It might’ve been a bullet. Is it important? It’s important. Tony needs to know, so he can wring the neck of whatever fucking beast ended his life before it started.





	Stardust

**Author's Note:**

> I just.. yeah I couldn’t finish this, I’m so sorry.

Tony stares at the sky, and wishes he were up there.

He feels the earth hard and unyielding beneath his feet, cold and soothing on his knees. Scrapes along his legs burn, but not more so than the throbbing of his arm; Father grabbed too hard when he got tossed out the house. His arms, baby-fat and small, curl closer to his tiny frame, dragging harshly across the freezing dirt. The sun shines, but not here.

He’s six, seven, eight, and though the red of his arm always fades, Tony sees it when he presses his forehead to the ground. _I’m better than this,_ he thinks, but he’s six, seven, eight, and the fleeting thought is gone before he’s old enough to chase it. Tony sees the red when he stares himself down after a shower, arm scrubbed pink and raw to hide the color that’s not really there, to paint the clusters of non-existent purple-blue-yellow with pain of his own. 

_I’m better than this,_ he thinks, but when he opens his eyes all he sees is the speckled white of uncovered dirt.

Heavily, he lands on his side. All the warmth leeches out of him; it doesn’t matter. Tony’s used to the cold. 

Tony watches the perfect door to his perfect house and the distance between him and it stretches miles long like taffy, unfathomable and yet still a product of his childish imagination. 

He uses that imagination to dream. Tony closes his eyes and dreams, of a warm hand on his shoulder, of a motherly love that would make him burn from the inside out. He dreams of a dad who loves him. He dreams of a suit to protect him and others. He dreams of red and gold and metal.

Not wanting to move, he scratches a tiny pit into the dirt. He’s still lying on the ground. Wet is seeping into his body where it molds into the earth; he knows he’ll get in trouble for this later, but he really can’t will himself to get up. And if he’s not gone by the time Howard opens the door, it’ll shut right back in his face. 

He sighs.

Tony stares at the people walking through the hallway, and wishes he were _them._

He’s twelve years old now. His shoulders press angrily against his stupid silk bedsheets, as if a thousand thread count will make his legs work. Tony’s counted a thousand stitches a thousand times, and each time he reaches infinity he finds he still can’t even wiggle his toes. 

“It was meant for me,” he remembers Father sighing, and clenches his fists against the tide of anger. Meant for him. Always meant for him, all the world is meant for Father. All Tony’s meant for is the crossfire.

He’s twelve years old now. His shoulders press into his stupid silk bedsheets like shrapnel. 

“An explosion.” Tony wiggles his fingers. His hands will get him out of this. Dig his limp, useless body out of the holes Father has made. Maybe an explosion isn't right. It might’ve been a bullet. Is it important? It’s important. Tony needs to know, so he can wring the neck of whatever fucking beast ended his life before it started.

Bile, bitter and acidic, roils in his chest. It makes him wheeze, claw furiously at the silk, silk, silk fucking sheets, drag and rip and crawl across the luxuries of a dead man. _I’m better than this!_ He thinks, furious and mean, enjoying the long, slow drag of his forearms across a perfectly polished floor. It will sting by the time he gets where he’s going, and Tony is _glad._

He drags himself down, down, further still, thinking of his dead weight, thinking of a plan in his mind. He needs to move. How will he prove himself while bedridden? Tony is better than the cheap wheelchairs they’ve brought him. He’s better than the line of thoughtless store bought cards. Of different nannies. Of things meant to take the place of a dad. Of the hand that presses on his forehead every morning checking for a fever that's never there, because she just can’t stand talking to him anymore. 

Tony took a bullet for his father and he gets a hospital chair? Hell no. _Fuck_ no. Tony’s going to get the greatest chair in the _history_ of wheelchairs, and it will be all his, and Howard will for once is his stupid ugly life look at someone who’s not him.

Tony is tired. He heaves himself up in the fading light of the sun, panting harshly. He hasn’t done this much work since he woke up with half a functioning body. It burns. It’s good. Sweeter than sin, this feeling, spurning him on like a star spinning out of orbit, to his inevitable explosion. He’s going to run — and isn’t that funny, he’s going to _run_ — with this momentum while he has it, take it and soar past the stardust, the remnants of other burnt-up stars. And he’ll be better than them, he thinks, bitter and cold, he’ll brush his fingers past the particles that remain and feel their atoms and be better than even that. And then he’ll explode, and it will be glorious.

Tony is so, so tired.

His dream— he remembers it now, of dirt under his broken fingernails, of an impossible day; dry earth, baked by the sun, wet marsh warmed by body heat. 

Spite feels good.

It builds in his fingertips. It leads him closer to supernova, manifesting in the form of clunky metal legs. It’s a start. A terrible start, but a start. Tony builds and works and slaves and sweats over this start, a frigid patch of concrete. It’s just like his dream, but there’s no midday warmth here. Only Tony and his body and— well, and this blowtorch.

Sparks fly past his face. He sees his future in them.

Anthony Howard Stark will walk again.

Tony stares at his hand, and wishes he knew what was going on in his own head.

He’s sixteen now. Bigger. Stronger. Somehow. He wheels himself expertly in the world’s greatest wheelchair that he built all on his own. It was hard work, all the prototypes. The original sets lay abandoned, but loved.

_“How did you make this, son?” He’s in awe. Tony’s lip curls._

_“I’ll never tell.” Tony makes it sound playful. He may not like his father, but he hates his wrath even more._

_Howard laughs, and Tony relaxes minutely. “Great business making model, son. You’ll go far someday.” He gets a clap on the shoulder that stings, but Tony’s glowing with vitriol and traitorous pride. He waits steadily, patiently until Howard is gone._

_“Farther than you can even dream,” he mutters, and turns back to the task ahead of him._

That was the last time he saw his dad.

Tony wants more. He’s always been meant for that— for more, for greed, for never having enough. His star burns even brighter. 

What he’s made is beautiful, even for his deathly low self esteem. It looks like something straight out of a movie; he’s painted it red and gold and white, fitted the bulky wheels with lights and motors so he won’t have to do all the work pushing it himself and so people can see him when he passes by (though he couldn’t possibly imagine people _not_ seeing him, considering he’s essentially built an iron throne on wheels), an adjustable back so he can recline as he sees fit. 

All in all, it’s a beautiful wheelchair.

And even more beautiful was the moment he very distinctly said “no” to all the vultures swarming around his amazing work.

“What?” Says a shocked retail representative. “I’m sorry, what?”

“No.” Tony repeats, lips stretching terribly up past his teeth to show a snarl rather than a smile. 

“But this could— this could revolutionize the lives of people everywhere— of _disabled_ people everywhere— of people like you!”

The smile fades off Tony’s face. The beauty has passed. He burns, blood rushing to his face to mark his shame. “I am not _disabled!”_ He nearly screams, tears welling up in his eyes. “I am not one of them! I will get better, okay? I _am_ better!”

The person— Tony thinks his name is Harry — stills. He watches as Harry’s mouth slowly closes and the scandalized look drops off his face. “Of course,” he responds, but the man’s voice is so sad Tony’s tears spill over his lashes and down his face. “come here, son.”

Tony cries in Harry’s arms until there’s nothing left to cry.

Tony stares at his blueprints, and wishes he understood them.

He’s in his early twenties, he thinks. It doesn’t really matter anymore; he’s better than he’s ever been. Tony’s starting to think this is his peak. He can’t climb any higher than this. His starcore pulses and shivers, flickers with the force of his impending supernova. Space dust lives beneath this fingernails. 

He’s drunk right now, actually. Totally drunk. Tony sniffs slow and heavy, sloppily wiping his nose with a leaden hand. Tony’s smart enough to work on this without being completely sober; he’s a goddamn genius, teen self be damned. He _needs_ to be drunk to work on this. 

This. His new legs. Sleeker, thinner, still a little bulky; he’d dug up some old drawings he made when he was younger and still naïve enough to care about that stuff, based them on that. Half of a superhero’s shell encases just one of his legs. He’s having trouble getting it to work. It starts and stops suddenly because the neurolink isn’t perfect— Tony thinks the wires he connected to his spine are probably misaligned. Or maybe the alcohol is fucking him up. Maybe it’s because his spine isn’t fully functioning. God, he doesn’t know. Alcohol tends to knock off a few brain cells.

They’re still the classic red and gold, except Tony ditched the white a year ago and instead decided to make the plating shiny. He’s like a bird, staring at it now, dreaming sleepily of all the things these legs could be. Maybe he’ll amputate. Tony laughs. Isn’t an idea?

He slinks slowly to a grease stained table. He’s not useless, he promises he’s not. What is he making this for? To walk? No, the blasters he installed aren’t useful for walking. They’re for flying. His hands move on their own accord, working their way slowly across the material, bringing an ancient dream to life. A dream he found up in the clouds.

When they’re finished, he’s so relieved he starts to weep. The tears sting, and if Tony didn’t know any better, he would say they’re pure ethanol.

“Yes,” he hisses. The light catches just right on the prototype and just like that, Tony explodes. All pieces of him launch far out into space, brought together only by the gravity of his own anger. The intoxication of _success._

Anthony Howard Stark will fucking walk again.


End file.
